The Hunt in the Forest, by Iain Twiddy

The Hunt in the Forest, by Paolo Uccello (Italy) 1470s

​The Hunt in the Forest
 
It ran the width of the fireplace above
the mantelpiece in my grandma’s parlour,
a room that passed between the scullery
and the draught-run hall, a room rarely sat in,
where the fire, hardly ever lit, barely
pushed back at the damp and cushioning cold. 
 
I used to creep, creakily, down the stairs 
before bed, bare feet as pale as the moon, 
and stand before it, fringed with light from the hall,
the carpet as soft as a king’s ruby robe, 
where it was a strip into a further world, 
royal as the band round the Christingle orange:
 
the bow-back dogs under the black backdrop, 
springing like licks of flame, the bodyheat red 
of the horses’ trappings matching the balanced hats, 
one horse rearing pinchily up, shocked back
from treading an unseen dog or strewn log
as others hived on on the trim green undergrowth, 
 
side-lit by a strike of thin, silver river
like a lance through the heads of three riders, 
as footmen threaded with switchy beaters
through the skinny shins of high-leafed trees, 
like they were conducting a rabbled orchestra, 
all jingling stirrups, barking louder than church bells, 
 
onward, into the apex of the perspective
like an arrow into the denser murk 
of the forest, like the vista that lay beyond
the twig-snap, leaf-hushed tiptoe back to bed,
the blackout ushered by the wrapped warmth they too
would have upped from, though no mattress deep as a forest. 
 
Tonight, if I close my eyes like a night,
my head slows, twig-click a-flicker with her,
close, the smooth stroke of her coat, scented, in; 
and I think how little I saw her alive,
yet how that should fill, given each life
is just a pin-prick in scattering dark; 
 
but I know it’s a heat I have to let go – 
like the thought of where that print could have gone
when the house was stripped and gutted, sold 
for next to nothing (no central heating,
single glazing, an area down at heel) – 
for its presence ever to be real; 

because who cares if it’s only a reprint,
as distant as that picture from the original, 
which all that time I thought was called the hunt by night, 
and which may never have been where I believed,
I have to let the memory find its own 
stepping way through the hostile forest of the head, 
 
to the glade-edge of vision, unsilvered by fear, 
patched by chestnut bark, a quiver of leaves, 
ash-lit, dapple-glanced, held-breathed there – 
within touching distance, its lissome warmth – 
for it to truly capture, slash up, butcher me 
in the whip-crack flash of its retreat. 

Iain Twiddy

Iain Twiddy studied literature at university and lived for several years in northern Japan. His poetry has appeared in Harvard Review, Salamander, The Blue Mountain Review, Poetry Ireland Review and elsewhere.